“I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.” —G.I. Gurdjieff

I’ve had an aching, tight shoulder injury—left shoulder—for nearly ten years now. It’s an old climbing accident. I’ve had lots of work done on it that has helped tremendously, though safe to say it’s never fully resolved.

I’m seeing a huge change in that now. A little background …

Part of my thus-far-incredible KMI schooling requires that I complete a Structural Integration series myself. (This is one of those things I’d want to do anyway in becoming a practitioner, aside from the fact that, of course, receiving bodywork is great in general! Like being required to eat ice cream or something.)

My series is with an outstanding practitioner, Dan Christofferson. Our series is under the banner of Hellerwork, which along with KMI is a school of Structural Integration based off of Ida Rolf’s contribution (her original “recipe” is still known as Rolfing).

Back to the main story … even with my working knowledge of and respect for the intricacy and interconnectedness of the human body, turns out I’ve been way off on some of the roots of my aches and pains. Dr. Rolf often said, “where you think it is, it ain’t.” That’s turning out to be quite true for me in this instance.

My left shoulder especially flares up, pain and inflammation, when I’m doing a lot of rock climbing. Certain stretches feet good, and all the direct work done on the shoulder girdle and rotator cuff musculature has helped tremendously in healing from an old injury (and re-injuries).

But the pain was never gone gone … like it was always lying dormant, waiting until I really started using my body in that familiar pattern.

Turns out, as we’re getting into the part of the series that deals with releasing and reorganizing my myofascial “core” (as opposed to more superficial myofascia, or the “sleeve”), well away from my shoulder, the actual sight of tension and pain … I’m seeing and feeling huge changes in this near-ancient injury site. It feels fantastic!

This core work, in turn, is churning up what feels like pretty old, fundamental emotional stuff, too. I feel like I’m directly experiencing the overlay between bony structure (the ribcage, for example) and the soft tissue (the pericardium and the heart) and energetic centers (the fourth chakra) and meridian lines that intersect there.

Call that overlap what we will, I suppose, but … to paraphrase Tom Myers, it just goes to show that whoever and whatever God is, s/he has little concern for how we divide and label the world. A shift is a shift is a shift.

Just a quick update from the front lines 🙂

I’m glad and honored to be sharing this work with all of you (which right now is the KMI 3-series, and I’ll be offering the full Structural Integration KMI 12-series in the new year after our program wraps up).